The Remaking of Donald Trump

Bloomberg Businessweek runs an excerpt of Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green.

Donald Trump had been thinking about running for president for more than 20 years before he locked onto the twin issues of race and immigration that vaulted him to the White House. Trump’s presidency, and the toxic civic culture it ushered in, will forever be linked to these issues.

History could have been different. While Trump always displayed populist instincts, his opinions on national affairs tended to reflect the views of a New York Democrat, which was, after all, the world he inhabited. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the period just before he entered politics, Trump’s appeal to blacks and Hispanics was powerful enough to make him the darling of corporate America. Although he was not a politician, Trump’s multicultural appeal was an achievement that a sclerotic Republican Party was increasingly desperate to match.

One reason this story has never been told is because Trump decided he’d be better served politically by destroying this legacy. He wasn’t exactly wrong: His “birther” attack on President Obama in 2011, when Trump was eyeing a 2012 run, marked a sharp pivot on race and then immigration that enabled his remarkable rise to the presidency.